


Tears Dry on their Own

by mumuinc



Series: Pitch Black, Blood Red (Raven!Neil series) [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: F/M, M/M, The Perfect Court (All For The Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 17:54:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11903067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumuinc/pseuds/mumuinc
Summary: Torture and violence is just another part of life in the Nest for Kevin, Jean and Nathaniel. That is, until the ERC start talking about Riko holding Kevin back.





	Tears Dry on their Own

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is actually the second oneshot in a series of Raven!Neil stories I've written, but I think it stands well enough on its own. The first one isn't safe for life (actually, neither is this.)
> 
> Graphic depictions of violence, threats of rape and torture all around. Tread with caution.
> 
> Title is from Amy Winehouse' song.

Jean had a headache. Their flight from Upstate Regional to Yeager had been delayed a few hours and now he was stuck in an airport lounge sitting between Kevin and Nathaniel, who had been fighting since they left Castle Evermore the day before. Nathaniel had not made things better since then, proceeding to completely antagonize Andrew Minyard, the goalkeeper they were supposed to be recruiting in Columbia, South Carolina, before roundly announcing to everyone, including Minyard’s twin brother, that Andrew would never amount to anything without the help of the Ravens. Minyard had been nonchalant and dismissive, but Kevin had been completely horrified by Minyard’s continued refusal, and Nathaniel’s flippant dismissal of their failure didn’t sit well with the striker.

 

The drive to the airport was only marginally better when, after bickering over Minyard for the better part of an hour while they waited for the driver Riko had hired to take them to the airport, Nathaniel had lapsed into hateful silence, refusing to look at either Kevin or Jean, and only occasionally looking up to glance at his phone. Jean didn’t know who his partner would be texting when both he and Kevin, the only two people Nathaniel voluntarily ever talked to on his phone, were not three feet from him. Nathaniel only gave him a black look when he attempted to ask, and so the ride to the airport passed in relative silence.

 

Of course that only lasted until they arrived, and after waiting thirty minutes for their boarding gate to open, the PA system announced the delay of their flight. Kevin was keyed up already from his day-long arguments with Nathaniel and strode over to the counter to pick a fight with the airline personnel or attempt to get the three of them rebooked on a different flight, one that left South Carolina in less than three hours.

 

He came back to where Jean and Nathaniel sat fifteen minutes later looking defeated.

 

“We’re delayed six hours. Plane we’re taking broke down in Portland and this pathetic excuse of an airline cannot be bothered to send a different plan since the flight isn’t fully booked.”

 

“Surprise, surprise,” Nathaniel muttered sourly, barely looking up from his phone where he was playing one of those find-random-things-in-creepy-abandoned-mansions game. He’d taken to playing the game since whoever he was texting ran out of things to say to him as a means to completely ignore Jean and Kevin. Jean knew avoidance when he saw it and although his two travel companions had been sniping at each other the whole time they were on the road, Kevin and Nathaniel hadn’t so much as looked at each other since they arrived at the airport.

 

They had been at this stand-off three days now, since that day Kevin had brought a tear-stained Nathaniel back to their room in the early morning hours. Jean had assumed he’d been helping the other boy back after taking another beating from Riko, but Nathaniel didn’t have any new marks on him save for the bruises on his face from where Riko had slapped him repeatedly when he sat out practice. Strangely, Kevin wouldn’t meet Jean’s eyes either when he tried to ask what had happened.

 

Now, the two of them sat on either side of Jean, still studiously ignoring each other, while they tried to decide what to do next.

 

“We could rent a car and just drive up,” Jean offered when Kevin made another annoyed sound at their predicament. “Two of us should be able to manage a seven hour drive.”

 

Nathaniel made a face into his phone. “I’d rather not be in a locked metal box for seven hours with Number Two here, thank you.”

 

Jean turned to look at him strangely. Nathaniel had never referred to Kevin, to any of them, by their number because he’d been the one to cling to his identity the most out of the three of them. He also idolized Kevin immensely and had practically worshipped the ground he walked on for most of the time Jean knew either boy, so his sullen behavior and belligerent antagonism now completely perplexed Jean.

 

“We should leave Nathaniel stranded on the highway in the middle of the night if we’re driving,” Kevin sniped back, not above childish retorts.

 

“We should take turns running over Kevin’s body with the rental car,” Nathaniel retorted testily, shutting off his game and pocketing his phone. “And if Riko or the Master asks, we can just say he pissed off a coyote and it bit his balls off, and we had to abandon his body on the Interstate or we wouldn’t get the rental deposit back with his stink.”

 

“Fuck you,” Kevin hissed.

 

Nathaniel stood up. Even drawing to his full height, he was a small young man, almost a foot shorter than Kevin, and with his slim frame swimming in the loose sweaters he favored, he looked like a tiny feral child than anything that could actually harm the great Kevin Day. The look in his pretty doe eyes was venomous.

 

“Fucking did, and as I recall, you enjoyed it.”

 

Kevin looked like he was about to have a stroke as it took him a few seconds to swallow his fury down and bat away Jean’s sputtered questions, before he stood up and stomped back to the airline counter to discuss their options with the airline personnel. Jean stared at Kevin’s retreating back with a strange look on his face and turned to talk to his partner, but Nathaniel had gone back to his phone game and pointedly ignored any and all of Jean’s attempts at conversation.

* * *

 

An hour and a half later, the three of them walked into the only remaining hotel room in the airport hotel. Kevin had not managed to get their flight rebooked to an earlier hour or have their tickets refunded so they could take a rental car to drive instead. And since the hour was getting late, Jean called in to the Master that they were staying the night over in South Carolina to catch a morning flight instead.

 

That would have been the end of the story and he could have turned in early, as soon as they were checked in, but tempers flared as soon as the hotel room door opened and the three of them were greeted to a room a with a single king bed.

 

Nathaniel shot Kevin a dirty look as if it was Kevin’s fault that all the other rooms were booked and stomped over to the reclining chair next to the floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the airport tarmac. Kevin rolled his eyes at the childish tantrum and tossed his overnight bag on the floor next to the bed before disappearing into the bathroom. Jean followed his teammates in at a more sedate pace, stopping to pull out some clothes for sleeping before carefully putting his bag away, and snagging Nathaniel’s bag to put away with his.

 

Nathaniel only sat still in the recliner for all of five minutes before getting up and announcing that he was going for a run. The airport hotel was full service and had a gym, and Jean was quietly thankful that his partner didn’t just up and disappeared without a word like he usually did when he was in one of his moods.

 

Kevin scowled at Jean when he noticed the recliner was empty as he stepped out of the bathroom. Jean shrugged; he was already used to Nathaniel needing to work out his anger issues by working his body ragged, and the look he sent Kevin said the other man shouldn’t be surprised either. Of all of them, only Nathaniel seemed unaffected by the pair-based system that the Ravens put in place to make partners and team members perfectly attuned to each other. Neither Kevin nor Jean could function normally alone and always needed their partner or someone from the team within line of sight. Nathaniel didn’t care, or maybe pretended he didn’t care, because he prefered to do things alone.

 

It was too late to order dinner  from room service (and Jean had looked over the menu and determined none of the food options healthy enough for consumption) so he let Kevin break out the vodka from the mini bar and took his turn in the bathroom to wash off the day’s grime.

 

He had just stepped into the shower, thinking to wash the stink of city pollution from his hair when the bathroom door burst open and a red-faced and sweaty Nathaniel poked his head through the frosted glass door of the shower enclosure, eyebrow quirked as he took in Jean’s naked body.

 

“That’s new.” Nathaniel nodded to the still-healing knife wound across Jean’s left shoulder, a long cut that was too shallow for stitches and stung badly as the shower water pelted his body.

 

He rolled his eyes and turned his head to wash his hair. “Yes, it has been a while since you last decided to oggle me while I shower, hasn’t it?”

 

Nathaniel smirked. “You like it.”

 

“I make no confession to such a preposterous thing.” He paused to squirt shampoo into his palm and lathered it between his hands. “Are you coming in or are you just letting steam out to piss Kevin off?”

 

The smirk widened to a grin as Nathaniel kicked the bathroom door closed. “Maybe I was trying to see if cold air could make your balls shrink.”

 

“You’re an asshole,” Jean muttered, tipping his head back to wash off the suds from his hair. Even through the sound of the water spray, he could hear Nathaniel’s languid movements to undress himself. The shower enclosure door opened again as he let himself in, yelping as lukewarm water hit his chest. He was still flushed from his run and the heat and steam only made his pale pink skin flush darker, more red, as Jean shuffled back to share the spray of warm water.

 

Nathaniel sighed happily, closing his eyes against the rush of water as Jean washed his hair. Jean wondered at the innocent pleasure the other boy took in simple, tactile gestures such as washing hair, and wondered, not for the first time, what kind of life he must have led before coming to the Nest… before meeting Jean. They had never talked to each other of their lives outside of the Nest and Jean didn’t know what kind of people Nathaniel’s parents were. He guessed they couldn’t be better than his if they sold him to borderline psychopaths like the Moriyamas, and if the array of white spidery scars on Nathaniel’s chest and back were any indication, he’d probably been abused longer and for much worse than whatever torture Riko thought of.

 

Jean couldn’t decide if it was better to grow up like a slab of meat for someone to take pleasure in cutting up, or the alternative of having random people in the team try to take advantage of their weaknesses. Either way, they were both battered and broken in their own respects, and stolen moments such as this, when the universe conspired to keep them out of Riko’s clutches for a few hours, were the only solace they could find in such a dreary existence.

 

He looked up from where he had been helpfully soaping up Nathaniel’s back when he felt warm fingers on his cheek. Nathaniel looked up at him with watery blue eyes and a shy smile.

 

“That feels nice,” he whispered, pressing his fingers against Jean’s face.

 

Jean pursed his lips tightly and continued to wash Nathaniel. Hazily, he could remember doing this for his younger sister, many years ago when he was still a boy, back when he still lived in France. It had been so long ago he’d almost forgotten what she looked like and it sent a pang of regret so sharp, he thought he tasted blood in his mouth.

 

He shook his head, determined not to get lost in his thoughts. “Did your mother never wash you like this when you were a child?”

 

Nathaniel shrugged. “I don’t remember much about her. She and my father were usually too busy running a crime organization to pay any attention to me.”

 

Jean nodded, not really expecting anything else. Nathaniel’s parents were like his, too caught up in their own problems to pay any attention to their children until they realized how they could profit from said children.

 

“Did she give you this?” he asked quietly, fingers running through a very distinctive shaped scar on the other boy’s left shoulder. “You don’t have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable.”

 

Nathaniel shook his head. “It’s fine. My dad gave me that when I was seven. Cops came by our house, and I was noisy or ill-mannered. I don’t remember. Anyway, he said I wasn’t quiet enough and he grabbed the iron from my mother.” He looked up at Jean, his bright eyes oddly vulnerable. “Sometimes, I still feel it, the phantom pain.”

 

Jean didn’t know what to say to that. His parents were human traffickers, and when they realized they could profit from their pretty, pale-eyed children, they’d made sure to treat them very well to preserve their looks so they could fetch the highest price when they were sold.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, bending to press a chaste kiss on Nathaniel’s shoulder. The other boy shivered at the touch, and clung onto Jean for the remainder of the time they were in the shower.

 

When they were done, Jean picked off one of the clean towels folded on the counter and toweled Nathaniel dry. Nathaniel smiled that shy, vulnerable smile of his and scrunched his nose adorably as he let Jean rub the towel vigorously through his damp tousled locks before taking it and wrapping it around his waist. He waited for Jean to finish toweling dry before they both stepped out of the bathroom.

 

The rush of cold air on his bare skin gave Jean goosebumps as he and Nathaniel got dressed for bed. Kevin was already passed out on one side of the king bed, the bottle of vodka he had taken from the mini bar almost empty. Kevin’s coping mechanisms were both disturbing and reeked badly. Jean went back to the empty closet and fished out one of the hotel room bathrobes and draped it over Kevin, before moving to strip off the comforter from under Kevin’s dead weight. He passed the duvet over to Nathaniel, who fidgeted to get comfortable on the recliner.

 

“Are you sure you don’t want to take the bed instead? Kevin probably won’t be moving until morning since he’s so dead drunk.”

 

Nathaniel shook his head, making a face. “I’d rather not smell his stink when he’s this drunk.”

 

“Okay,” Jean said and moved to flick off all the lights, leaving only the bedside lamp on. “I’m going to read for a while. If you change your mind, you’re free to wake me in case I fall asleep.”

 

Nathaniel wrinkled his nose in disdain. “Yeah, no, that’s not happening.”

 

Jean shrugged and got comfortable on his side of the bed, completely ignoring Kevin’s soft snores. He’d been reading a lot of English novels lately to improve his English, to help him catch up faster with his college classes. He managed to get through a few chapters of To Kill A Mockingbird before he finally drifted off to sleep.

 

He felt as if he’d scarcely fallen asleep when the quiet sounds of whimpering woke him. He thought at first it was Kevin, choking on his own tongue in his drunken sleep, but Kevin was also sitting up groggily on his side of the bed, casting a confused look in the hazy half light of the bedside lamp Jean had left on to look for the source of the crying.

 

Jean sat up and turned to where Nathaniel was curled up in his side on the recliner. He was shrouded in the duvet cover but his body was trembling so hard, Jean could hear the recliner creaking with his shaking.

 

“Wake him up,” Kevin grumbled, pulling one of the pillows to stuff over his face in an attempt to drown out the sounds of the pathetic crying.

 

Jean shot him a dirty look. “No. It might do you some good if you thought less of yourself and empathized more with other people.”

 

Kevin snorted. “He’s going to keep both of us up and we have practice tonight when we get back. Don’t think Riko’s not going to make us play just because we lost sleep over your boyfriend crying in his sleep.”

 

Jean rolled his eyes and got up. Nathaniel didn’t wake when he placed a gentle hand on the other boy’s quivering shoulder, where he’d seen the scar from the iron burn. Nathaniel let out a tortured cry.

 

Kevin shot Jean a dirty look. “Wake him up or I will.”

 

Jean couldn’t stand to hear more of the tortured crying. He’d seen Nathaniel in one of Riko’s punishment sessions. He’d held the boy close on days he had been so broken from Riko and the Master’s beatings that Jean didn’t know how to begin to put him back together. And in all those times, he’d never heard him cry like this. The sounds reminded Jean of an abused puppy he’d found when he was ten back in the streets of Marseille. The puppy had been horrifically abused, one leg broken, likely hit by a passing cart pushed around by dock workers, and there were burn marks on its mottled skin from being pelted with cigarette butts by street children. Jean had taken the puppy home to his sister and they’d nursed it back to health, only to have it taken away by his father and put down, as the family was not in the business of taking strays. That had been Jean’s first true brush with real cruelty, and the memory left him wondering if Nathaniel was dreaming of his parents, of the kind of monsters they were that they could inspire this kind of visceral response in his subconscious that not even Riko, with his knives and savage beatings on the court, could.

 

“Neil,” he whispered, using an endearing nickname he’d called Nathaniel only a few times when the other boy had been out of his mind with panic or pain. “Wake up.”

 

Nathaniel’s eyes shot open, one hand clenching into a fist, swinging in Jean’s direction, the other hand groping around the folds of the duvet as if to look for a weapon. Jean barely managed to sidestep the blow. Nathaniel’s eyes were wild with fear for a moment before his brows furrowed into a scowl as he spotted the unimpressed look on Kevin’s sour face, and then soften when he saw the concerned look in Jean’s eyes.

 

“I--sorry.” He shook his head as if to clear his waking self of the remnants of whatever past nightmare he’d relived in his dreams. He tugged the duvet cover closer to his chest. “I’ll be quiet.”

 

“Hush,” Jean whispered, running a soothing hand through the boy’s sweat-damp hair. “Come on, you should move to the bed.”

 

“Not happening,” Kevin snorted. “The two of us barely fit in it.”

 

Jean gave him a withering stare. “For once in your life, Kevin, please.”

 

Kevin grumbled under his breath but finally obligingly moved to the edge of the bed to make space for Jean and Nathaniel. Nathaniel reluctantly allowed Jean to pull him up from the recliner and the two of them huddled together on the other side, Jean in the middle, his body forming a barrier between the two feuding players, and Nathaniel curled up on his side, hand clutching Jean’s t-shirt, face tucked against his shoulder. He was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. Kevin looked down at the two of them for a minute, his expression unreadable. Jean pointedly tugged Nathaniel closer to keep him from falling off, choosing to ignore whatever weird expression was on Kevin’s face. He reached over Nathaniel’s body to shut off the bedside lamp and the room was finally plunged in darkness.

 

Before he could drift off, he decided to give Kevin the truth: “He is not my boyfriend. I would never take advantage of his yearning for a kind touch like that.”

 

He heard Kevin make a noise that he didn’t really know how to interpret, but closed his eyes and chose to ignore that as well, until Kevin turned to his side, back to Jean’s back, and finally fell asleep too. 

* * *

 

Things went back to normal when the three of them returned to Castle Evermore. Jean and Nathaniel lost going out privileges as a result of their extended stay in South Carolina. Riko was mad at their failure to recruit Minyard and took it out on Nathaniel, who bore the assault with his usual stoicism, and then proceeded to antagonize both Riko and Kevin on the court during their practices.

 

The US Court came for practices the week after, and with the team came Thea. Jean watched Kevin to see if he would react differently now that Thea technically was no longer a Raven and they no longer had to keep their relationship a secret, but Riko and Kevin were also on the US Court team, and so it didn’t appear that Kevin acted any differently around her, especially outside the court.

 

Nathaniel seemed to tune all of them out. He focused on watching the US Court practice, eyes trained on Kevin during drills and scrimmages, but didn’t offer opinions or antagonize Riko any more than usual. And because there were people not part of the Raven team at the Nest, Nathaniel and Jean were mercifully spared punishment too brutal to be hidden from plain sight.

 

Nothing strange or particularly different happened even when summer practices ended and the school term began, until the Master brought Riko and Kevin to an ERC meeting with him at the start of fall term, just before Exy season started. It wasn’t supposed to be anything different. The Master always brought the brightest stars of his team to the first ERC meeting, but when they came back, the backlash from Riko had been unbearable.

 

Jean choked on bile and other unmentionables he’d brought up when Riko finally tired of waterboarding him and Nathaniel. His legs were shaking so badly, he thought he was going to collapse. Nathaniel couldn’t get his limbs to cooperate so he settled for retching on the floor where he lay, soaked down to his underwear and shivering in the aftermath of Riko’s brutality.

 

Jean managed to crawl over to where the other boy lay, grimacing at the acid taste he couldn’t rub out of his mouth with his weak, twitching hands, and dragged Nathaniel away before he drowned in his own vomit. Neither of them could begin to guess what had set Riko off until Kevin appeared at the door of the abandoned dorm room Riko used as a torture chamber. He appeared unharmed save for the blossoming red bruise on his jaw and he stared at the two boys on the floor in abject horror for a moment, his jaw twitching, whether from the pain of his bruise or something else, Jean didn’t know.

 

He raised his ruined, tear-stained face up at Kevin. “I don’t get it. We didn’t do anything!”

 

In his lap, Nathaniel let out a choked sob, but it sounded like deranged laughter in Jean’s ears, before the redhead rushed to push off and vomit some more. Kevin rushed forward, horrified, and grabbed Nathaniel by the shoulders, just in time before he slumped, body shaking, drenched in water and his own cold sweat.

 

“I’m sorry!” Kevin exploded, his arms tightening around Nathaniel’s trembling shoulders. The other boy went limp, gasping for air when the bile and water no longer came up with every twitch of his battered body.

 

“It’s the ERC, isn’t it?” Jean wheezed as Kevin shifted Nathaniel’s limp body to one arm so he could offer a hand to Jean to haul him up.

 

Jean gestured tiredly towards the corridor and let Kevin manhandle his partner out the room to get them to their dorm. Nathaniel was too out of it to walk and Kevin half-dragged, half-carried him back to his shared room with Jean.

 

They had to wait until the door was safely locked lest other curious ears invited themselves into their conversation. Kevin looked on at them with dead eyes as Jean methodically stripped his roommate and grabbed his warmest sweats to prevent the onset of hypothermia.

 

“They’re talking about Riko holding me back.” Kevin’s voice was flat, hollowed out and scraped thin. “They want the Master to prove he’s not holding me back.”

 

From the bed, Nathaniel let out another deranged laugh. “Has it really only dawned on everyone only now?” He raised glazed blue eyes to both Kevin’s aghast face and Jean’s furrowed brows. “Oh my God.”

 

Jean scowled at his partner. “Hush, you stupid child, before you bring the devil in this room.”

 

Nathaniel grinned cruelly at them, the expression calling up more bile to Jean’s throat that he had to painfully swallow down. With his pale, sickly face, Nathaniel looked like death smiling at his next two victims.

 

“Shut up and go to sleep,” Jean muttered in French before gesturing to Kevin to step outside to continue their conversation out of earshot. He spoke with a low voice, too afraid that Riko might be hiding in the shadows of the dimly-lit hallway, ready to beat him and Kevin for talking in a language he couldn’t understand. “What are you going to do?”

 

“What _can_ I do, Jean?” Kevin cried back in French. He ran a nervous hand through his messy dark hair, green eyes wide with a haunted, hunted look. “The Master has already agreed to the show.”

 

Jean grabbed Kevin’s shirt, his desperation leaking into the way his fingers scrabbled into the fabric, twisting it viciously. “You can’t let him lose, Kevin. Nathaniel and I… we might not survive it.”

 

Kevin stared down at his white-knuckled fist, twisted in the fabric of his sweatshirt. “I know, Jean. I’m sorry.”

 

* * *

 

Things came to a head finally at the winter banquet. Kevin’s potential being curtailed by Riko’s more aggressive personality was a favorite ERC topic and no one, not the attending coaches of the other teams at the party, not the players from the other teams in the district, not the ERC officials themselves, could shut up for very long about who the better player was in the Ravens’ most infamous pair.

 

Jean’s heart thudded in his throat as he retreated to the locker rooms where Nathaniel usually  waited out the party, since he could not yet attend. Riko and Kevin had geared up and dinner guests had cleared one side of the court to let the two strikers take their shots at the goal. Even hidden away in the locker rooms, they could hear the excited yells of the dinner spectators as one or both strikers scored.

 

“He better not lose,” Nathaniel muttered, deciding once and for all that he was tired of waiting around and set out for the court.

 

Jean would have yelled at him to shut up, that their lives were contingent on Kevin actually losing, if they wanted to live through the night’s torture, when Nathaniel’s body hurtled several feet away and hit the locker room door with a sick thud. Out of the corner of his eye, Jean spied Riko brandishing his racquet like a weapon, his charcoal eyes overtaken by a manic gleam as he threw his racquet aside and hauled Nathaniel to his feet and punched him viciously in the face. Jean thought he heard the sick sound of the redhead’s nose breaking but he had no time to pull the other boy to safety because Riko was on him in a heartbeat, raining punches on his unprotected face.

 

_Stop_ , he wanted to scream, but Riko’s fist caught him squarely on the mouth, splitting his lips and smearing blood all over his face.

 

“Where’s Kevin?!” he yelled, dragging Jean up to his face by the lapels of his dress jacket, before drawing back to punch him again, and shaking him hard enough to rattle his teeth.

 

“We haven’t seen him.” Riko punched him again. Jean was was going cross-eyed with the pain in his face and vaguely wondered if Riko had broken his nose too. “He hasn’t been here, Riko, please!”

 

Riko made a disgusted noise and shoved him away, striding out into the bowels of the Nest to look for his missing partner, stopping only a moment to viciously kick Nathaniel down when he tried to get up. Jean waited for the stomp of his court shoes to fade into white noise before crawling over to where Nathaniel lay in a crumpled heap, clutching his side and moaning in pain.

 

Jean gave the other boy a cursory check, and once he’d ascertained that his nose hadn’t, in fact, been broken, started to haul him to his feet, but Nathaniel waved him away with a horror-stricken look.

 

“You have to find Kevin, Jean. Riko’s going to hurt him, I know it!”

 

Jean wiped angrily at the tears that threatened to spill and nodded, guiding the other boy into the locker room and sitting him on a bench.

 

“Lock the door behind me. We don’t know if any of the others are coming after us.”

 

Nathaniel nodded tiredly, clutching his side and grimacing in pain as he pulled up his shirt to check the bruises forming against his ribs. It looked like every movement, no matter how minuscule, caused him pain and Jean wondered if that large mottled splash of red darkening into purple in Nathaniel’s side was only bruised ribs and not broken bones.

 

“Go!” he yelled, when Jean hesitated at the door.

 

Finding Kevin in the maze of the Nest wasn’t easy. The Nest was a large underground network of dorm rooms, common rooms, gyms, rec rooms… everything a large team of athletes needed to never have to leave its tomb-like safety. Jean tried to listen for the sounds of Kevin’s or Riko’s voices above the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears. The click of his dress shoes clattering on the floor as he ran from room to room echoed eerily through the empty corridors until he heard the frantic sounds of yelling and followed it down to the Black Wing, near where Kevin and Riko’s room was.

 

He found them in one of the study rooms, Riko pinning a much larger Kevin down with a sharp elbow to the throat and punching at Kevin’s gut. For once in his life, Kevin was actually trying to fight back, his own fists flying, but while Kevin knew to withstand violence on the court, Riko was more attuned to the struggles of a pinned prisoner and he used his weight to pin down Kevin’s legs the same way he always did whenever Jean struggled against the knives.

 

Riko looked up as Jean skidded to stop in the doorway, grinning maniacally. “Ah, perfect, come here, Jean. Kevin needs to be taught some manners.”

 

“No!” Kevin yelled, bucking against Riko and succeeding in dislodging him and attempted to scramble away only for Riko to catch him by his hair and yank his head back at an angle that looked both awkward and very painful.

 

Riko glowered at Jean, batting away at Kevin’s attempts to escape. “Hold his hand still, Jean. His playing hand.” Jean hesitated. “Do it or I will have every Raven in the team take a turn on you and your precious Nathaniel.” His grin widened maliciously. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Both of you are so obsessed with that twitchy little bird. What do you think, Jean? I chain him to the bed and make you watch while all the backliners fuck his brains out? Or maybe I chain you to the bed and get the girls some action on you while he watches. What’ll it be? Are you going to hold down Kevin or did you or Nathaniel not want to be able to walk from the pain in your asses for a few days?”

 

Jean closed his eyes and swallowed. Either choice Riko gave him, he would still never be able to forgive himself. He couldn’t hope for Kevin to forgive him, but he wondered if Nathaniel could stand the fact that his best friend would be part and party to the destruction of the man he loved.

 

“I’m sorry,” Jean choked as he reached for Kevin’s left arm.

 

The scream that ripped out of Kevin’s ragged throat would haunt his nightmares for years.

 

* * *

 

It was almost morning when Jean stumbled back into his room. His suit was battered and bloodstained beyond repair. His left eyes was nearly swollen shut and his lips, which had already started to scab hours earlier, were cracked and bleeding. He had to limp back from the Black Wing to the Red because Riko had swiped his legs with his racquet once he was finished stomping Kevin’s hand into a bloody pulp.

 

He felt completely hollowed out, his soul felt like it had been scraped off the battered remnants of his body with a spoon. Kevin’s screams wouldn’t stop ringing in his ears, and when he couldn’t stand it anymore, Kevin’s voice would morph into the venomous last words he hissed at Jean as Jean helped him escape into the night.

 

_“If there’s any part in your black soul left that still considered me a friend, you would help me leave this place.”_

 

Jean hung his head as he groped in the dark for a change of clothes. He could smell the copper tang of dried blood on him, his and Kevin’s, but he was too bone-weary to bother washing off, and flicking the lights on would wake Nathaniel. Jean desperately wanted to delay that conversation as late as he possibly could. He’d already lost one friend that night. He didn’t think his sanity would be able to take it if he lost his partner too.

 

Jean stumbled as he pushed his dress pants down, and cursed under his breath in French when the crumpled form on the bed across from his stirred as Nathaniel groped in the darkness to look for the bedside lamp switch.

 

“Jean?”

 

Jean’s brain rudely supplied the echo of Kevin’s pained, cracked voice, the words too painful and raw for him to repeat to Nathaniel.

 

_“I don’t care, Jean, I didn’t ask him to fall in love with me.”_

 

“Hey,” he whispered, wincing silently as he maneuvered his bruised legs into sweatpants.

 

Nathaniel flicked the lights on, and the room was bathed in a soothing orange glow that camouflaged the worst of the blood and sweat on Jean’s discarded suit. He would have to throw that away, and pick out a new one for future formals.

 

“Are you still hurt?” he rasped as he hurriedly smoothed the sweatshirt down his body to hide the multitude of bruises now forming on the pale skin of his torso. It was easier to concentrate on his concerns for his partner than to think about the cuts and bruises on his body and how he got them.

 

“I’m fine,” Nathaniel said flippantly. “Is Kevin hurt? Can we go see him?”

 

Jean’s chest ached so tightly at the tiny hopeful note in Nathaniel’s voice. Even with his face black and blue, his nose swollen, ribs bruised, possibly broken, Nathaniel couldn’t hide his obsession with Kevin. Jean didn’t want to have to tell him, but he’d never been able to protect Nathaniel from the ugly truths about the Nest, the truths about Kevin.

 

“Kevin’s gone, Nathaniel,” he muttered, sinking on the side of Nathaniel’s bed.

 

The other boy’s brows furrowed. “I can call him?”

 

Jean sighed. “No, you can’t. He shut off his phone when he left.”

 

“When he left,” Nathaniel repeated quietly. “Where would he--he’s not coming back, is he?”

 

Jean shot him a pained stare. The desolate look in Nathaniel’s pale eyes threatened to break his already fractured heart. “No.” His voice was flat, matter of fact. He just wanted the night over with and if he had to callously tell Nathaniel that the man he loved had abandoned them to their fates, then so be it. He wouldn’t spare himself or his partner any part of the pain of reality.

 

“Riko broke his hand.” He rubbed his own hand over his face tiredly and winced at the pain of his fingers passing over his bruises. “He made me help him. So.” He sighed again, feeling the ache in his chest tighten impossibly, an almost unbearable pain. One silent tear tracked down Nathaniel’s pale cheek. “So Kevin made me help him run away.”

 

Nathaniel nodded and lay back into his pillows gingerly, as if suddenly, every ache in his broken clamored for attention, but he kept his face carefully blank even as he turned his back to Jean to face the wall.

 

“Shut the light off when you’re done, would you?”

 

Jean opened his mouth, wanting to tell the other boy that he’d tried to make Kevin understand, that he’d tried to protect them both, to protect them all. Kevin may have had his playing hand broken, but he was alive. He was free. Jean and Nathaniel would have one peaceful night, untouched by Riko’s madness. Instead, what came out was, “I’m sorry.”

 

Nathaniel said nothing, so Jean shut off the light and moved towards his own bed to replay the sound of Kevin’s ragged voice in his mind until the shame and guilt of his participation in Kevin’s unmaking threatened to drown him in darkness more suffocating the the tomb-like silence of the Nest.

 

_“What about Nathaniel, Kevin? How can you think it justified to gamble away his--and my-- dignity just so you could continue playing?”_

 

_“I don’t care, Jean. I didn’t ask him to fall in love with me.”_

 

_“You slept with him, Kevin! And then you got mad and completely ignored him afterwards. Now you’re just going to leave.”_

 

_“I have no place here anymore! Look at this, Jean! Look at what you’ve done and tell me there’s still anything left for me to stay here!”_

 

_“You have us, Kevin. Not everything is about Exy.”_

 

_“Everything_ is _about Exy, Jean. You don’t get it but Nathaniel would. He’d understand. Now if there’s any part in your black soul left that still considered me a friend, you would help me leave this place.”_

 

He thought, startling out of his reverie, that he heard sounds of weeping coming from the mess of red hair and thick blankets in the bed across from his, but the room was silent. It took him a while to realize that the crying sounds came from his own mouth and he pressed a hand over his mouth and hoped Nathaniel would not wake. Morning would come soon.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This is me taking a break from bamf!Kevin in the Hummingbird Heartbeats series. Let's have Exy-obsessed, selfish asshole Kevin back. I miss him.
> 
> What Kevin and Nathaniel were fighting about in the first part of the story was actually Kevin being an asshole after they slept together. There's another fic on that, and I'll post it when it gets to a point where it isn't so fucking offensive, it'll make people choke.


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